Academics See HAL in Mankind's Future
Posted on May 28, 2008
British academics have rated Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey as the science fiction film that most realistically portrays man's future reports Wales News.
The group of scientists, including representatives from Cardiff University and the University of Glamorgan, alongside contemporaries from Oxford and King's College London, judged that the cult sci-fi film featured the most plausible view of scientific progress.That's a scary scenario. We don't want to think of HAL as likely, especially with computer power and algorithms constantly improving.Artificially intelligent super computers with the power to conspire against people, such as HAL, were considered the science fiction imagining most likely to become a reality.
Mark Brake, professor of Science Communication at the University of Glamorgan, is quoted as saying, "2001 raised science fiction cinema to a new level. The unfolding four-million-year filmic story brilliantly portrays Arthur C Clarke's disturbing man-machine encounter with HAL a computer turned murderer. This unsettling scenario is not something we would ever want to imagine happening in reality, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility that artificial intelligence could turn on its creators."
The article says Ridley Scott's Blade Runner film starring Harrison Ford was ranked second in the study. Following that was the 1971 version of Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain. A remake of this film was just released as a mini-series on A&E - it will also be available on DVD on June 3rd.